Deep Waters (33 page)

Beyond the door, in the gallery, a male voice shouted something that neither of the officers could understand.

İkmen took his telephone out of his jacket pocket and pressed the receive button.

‘İkmen.’

‘Inspector, it’s Çöktin,’ an urgent, whispering voice responded.

‘What do you want?’ İkmen turned away from the sight of Arto Sarkissian removing bloodied surgical gloves.

‘Inspector Suleyman and I are at the Aya Sofya, with Ali and Felicity Evren.’

‘Oh, good, I’ve been trying to find them,’ İkmen replied. ‘I even asked Dr Halman if she knew where they might be.’

‘Well, she does now, sir,’ Çöktin said in tones İkmen now recognised as anxious. ‘She may be joining us soon. Ali Evren is threatening his sister with a knife. He’s with her in the gallery.’

‘Why the fuck would he be threatening his sister?’

‘Inspector Suleyman and I may be about to find that out.’

‘I’ll join you,’ İkmen said decisively and ended the call. He turned towards Tepe. ‘I need you to stay here while I go to Sultan Ahmet,’ he said.

‘Right.’

Arto Sarkissian rolled his sleeves down and walked towards his anxious-looking friend.

‘Problems?’ he asked.

İkmen sighed as he pulled his overcoat on and wound his scarf round his neck. ‘The Evren boy might know rather more about his father’s death than we thought.’ He riffled in his coat pocket for his car keys and pulled them out. Then he left without another word.

‘Are you going to kill me?’ Felicity said as she felt the edge of the knife press into the flesh at her throat.

‘I loved you,’ her brother replied as he let his breathless gaze drift around the margins of the enormous building. ‘We were going to live for ever.’

‘If you put the knife down and let me go, everything will be all right. I’ll take care of you.’

‘Like you did when you went off day after day with Rifat Berisha? When you allowed him to ruin you?’

‘David,’ she said, ‘Rifat never touched me in the way you think. I keep telling you but you—’

‘This building is very quiet now,’ he whispered close to her ear. ‘Do you think they’ve cleared it? Do you think they’ve called the police?’ He smiled. ‘You’d like it if they’ve called that Inspector Suleyman, wouldn’t you? You like him. You’d like him to—’

‘David, for Christ’s sake!’

He pulled her in hard towards his chest. ‘This is how it’s going to be,’ he said. ‘First, I’m going to see whether you will die and then I’m going to leave here, with or without you. Either way, I’m on the run from death.’

Just as he tensed his arm to slash her throat, he heard a noise from the gallery opposite. He looked up.

‘Police,’ he said, ‘or somebody.’ And then, suddenly childlike, his face crumpled and he seemed on the edge of tears. ‘They’re going to try and stop me, Flick. What am I going to do?’

‘David, we need to talk about this! You and I can both die. I know we’ve always said that we won’t but the reality is . . .’

He wasn’t listening. His eyes were everywhere, scanning for danger. He knew now he should have killed her immediately. But she was his sister and more, and he loved her . . . Lying bitch. But not even those harsh words inspired him and Ali Evren began to cry.

Although technically he shouldn’t even have been near the scaffolding, Berekiah Cohen was one of the last people to climb back down to the ground. Professor Apa, the project leader, had been impressed for some time by his enthusiasm and had actually promised to demonstrate his use of Mr Lazar’s gold leaf to Berekiah when the young man told him that he and his team must leave the building. Boys threatening women with knives was not a matter for academics or for men who worked in gold shops. It was a matter for the police and maybe for doctors too if the boy proved to be unbalanced – which seemed possible. After all, who but a madman would attempt to threaten someone in such a public place? Reflexively, Berekiah’s mind turned towards the subject of his brother Yusuf. In the fear and misery that attended his paranoid delusional state, Yusuf had attacked his doctor, meaning to kill him. After that he had been heavily medicated for a very long time. Then he’d tried to kill himself. He had hoarded some of his sleeping tablets and then locked himself into one of the bathrooms. He’d taken the lot. And when the doctors had eventually managed to revive him, Yusuf had cried – because he was in pain, yes, but mainly because he was still alive, a state Berekiah knew his brother found intolerable.

Once down on the ground, Berekiah and the scientific team were quietly escorted out of the building. Consigned to lurking in the snowy gardens, Berekiah took his hat out of his pocket and put it on. He then lit a warming cigarette, which he smoked while he and all the others watched a taxi pull up in front of the main entrance to the museum complex. But rather than stare as others were doing at the occupants of the car, Berekiah turned away in order to pursue his thoughts in solitude.

The notion that the boy he had seen up in the gallery was unhinged in some way was pervasive. Berekiah found himself wondering what the lad was going through – what motivated him, how he felt now that he was in this situation. What he might feel when confronted by the police. When Yusuf was particularly agitated, it was almost as if he was struggling with something inside, something devilish even. When asked by the medical director of the institution where her son lived what she understood about Yusuf’s condition, Estelle Cohen had said that he was ‘haunted’. By what, she didn’t know. But Berekiah thought that he did. After all, things seen in combat could not then be unseen, as he well knew himself. It was all to do with whether one was overrun by the ghosts or only, as he was, bothered on occasions. Like now.

Just before what turned out to be the lone occupant of the taxi entered the building, Berekiah looked over his shoulder briefly to see what was happening. The visitor, who was now talking to a short, stout guard, was a woman. She had blonde hair and he recognised her immediately. Zelfa.

‘That boy’ll wish he’d never been born before the day’s out.’

Berekiah looked round and found himself in the presence of an elderly man in the now familiar uniform of a museum guard.

‘If of course he survives this day,’ the man added as he rubbed his bare hands together against the bitter weather. ‘Mad, of course, which is why she’s here.’ He tipped his head towards Zelfa and then whispered, ‘Psychiatrist. And now that the police are here . . .’ He shrugged. ‘If you ask me they should all be locked up.’

Resisting an urge to disagree violently with this opinion, Berekiah just said, ‘Oh.’

‘Well, it’s no good for our business, tourism,’ the guard continued, ‘and anyway, it can only end badly, can’t it? I mean, if he means to do it, he’ll do it. It’s kismet. I can’t even start to think about the mess.’ Then he walked away to talk to one of his, no doubt, equally disgruntled fellows.

Berekiah sat down on the hard, cold ground and tried not to think about what Zelfa might shortly have to witness.

Although Felicity Evren was far from being a willing hostage, she was so very tiny that it was easy for her brother to pull her along with him as he darted out into the centre of the gallery.

Suleyman unclipped his radio from his belt and called Yıldız.

‘What’s he doing?’ he asked. ‘Can you see?’

‘I think he saw me, sir,’ the younger man replied, his voice sibilant with hushed tones. ‘There’s no way round above the mihrab, he’s moving into the southern gallery which is a dead end.’

‘Perhaps he’s frightened we might try to come in behind him.’

‘Probably. Do you want me to line him up?’

‘Yes, but don’t even think about taking a shot. Inspector İkmen is on his way – take your mark only from him or myself. Is that understood?’

‘Yes, sir.’

Suleyman signed off and replaced the radio on his belt. He looked across at Çöktin and a middle-aged cadaverous individual known as Constable Güney.

‘Ali Evren is English, he will communicate more effectively in his native tongue,’ he said, and shrugged. ‘So it would appear I’m going to have to employ my knowledge of that language.’ He looked at Çöktin. ‘I know that you’re reasonably fluent, İsak.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Güney?’

‘I can do “please” and “thank you” and I can ask for beer, tea and girls.’

Suleyman smiled. ‘I like your priorities, Güney,’ he said, ‘but I think it might be safer for all of us if you remain silent. Sergeant Çöktin and I will translate anything we think you might need to know.’

‘Very well, sir.’

‘Good.’ He slipped one hand underneath his jacket and felt his gun. He did not intend to draw it, he just needed to know it was there. And then with a smile he said, ‘Gentlemen?’

The other two officers silently signalled that they were as ready as they were ever going to be.

And then mounting the top of the ramp, Suleyman stepped out into the Gynekoion.

Ali Evren, his right hand pushing the blade of his knife hard up against his sister’s throat, was standing with her opposite an ornate three-columned break in the symmetry of the inner gallery wall. Felicity’s eyes were wide with fear.

‘The Byzantine empresses used to watch the religious ceremonies from that place,’ Suleyman said, tipping his head in the direction of what was in effect a royal box. ‘Whether Christian or Muslim, men and women have always been very separate in this place.’

Although there was a pause between Suleyman speaking and Ali’s reply, when the boy did respond it was in a surprisingly firm voice.

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that is true. Although if they were related, men and women could get together after church. A lot of the Byzantine emperors were very close to their sisters and mothers – that’s what my history teacher said. We came here on a school visit.’

‘Yes.’

‘Some of them even killed their female relatives,’ he said and then, looking down into Felicity’s frightened eyes, he added, ‘Particularly if they were treacherous and told lies.’

‘I have never lied to you, David!’ Felicity gasped. ‘Never!’

‘Oh?’ His grip upon her throat and shoulders tightened. ‘What about death? What about that? What about the way you cheated on me with the Albanian?’

Suleyman, resisting the urge to move too far forward, said, ‘Now I do not know what any of this is about or why this is happening—’

‘I only want my sister to apologise to me,’ the boy interrupted. ‘We’ve done some terrible things together, things that maybe I wouldn’t even have considered if it hadn’t been for Flick.’

‘What things?’

Ali and his hostage had been moving slowly backwards for some moments; now he accelerated, dragging his sister rapidly towards the marble doorway known as the Gates of Heaven and Hell. Beyond that lay the southern gallery proper and, as Yıldız had said earlier, eventually a dead end.

‘Where are you going?’ Suleyman asked as both he and Çöktin stepped forward to keep pace with their quarry. ‘You’re moving in the wrong direction for the exit.’

‘Not necessarily,’ the boy replied with a smile. Bracing his back against one of the ancient marble doorposts, he looked down into the great space that constituted the nave of the church. ‘There are other ways.’

‘You can’t fly, David!’ Terrified, Felicity followed her brother’s gaze. ‘Tell him he can’t fly, Inspector!’

Suleyman, though confused by this, did so. The boy didn’t appear to be listening. He made a tiny surface cut on his sister’s throat and caught the blood on one of his fingers. Then he placed his finger in his mouth and sucked it. He did it with very obvious pleasure.

Although the original plan had been to go straight up to the gallery in company with Avcı, Zelfa had to pause at the entrance to the exonarthex. Dizzy, her head pounding, she thought she might throw up.

‘I just need a moment,’ she said to Avcı and doubled back into the museum garden again.

‘Are you all right, doctor?’

‘Yes!’

Luckily he didn’t follow her and although there were a lot of people gathered about outside, no one seemed to notice her. Not that she was actually sick. As soon as she sat down and took a few deep breaths, she began to feel better. But the fact that she was sitting in what was now quite deep snow didn’t register for a few moments. This alone made her realise that she was probably quite ill. That or she was just frightened. If, as she suspected, Ali Evren was testing out his hypothesis regarding his sister, it was she herself who had put that idea into his mind. ‘Take Felicity to the Aya Sofya with you and see what happens.’ She had left the resolution of Ali’s delusion about his sister up to him. She had, in effect, given him permission to do this. And the testing of hypotheses regarding suspected vampires could, if her memory of
Dracula
served her well, be quite drastic. They included such life-threatening procedures as driving a stake through the subject’s heart, burning, and of course cutting off the head. Ali Evren had, so Mehmet had told her, a knife to his sister’s throat; clearly, Ali was not impressed by the fact that Felicity had survived all of those religious crosses on the walls of the museum. Or perhaps, having discovered Felicity’s true and obviously mortal nature, he now felt duped and angry with her. After all, she had lied to him, hadn’t she? A stupid and pointless lie, in Zelfa’s opinion. Everyone has a reflection – everyone.

‘Zelfa?’

The voice, which was deep and rich, was instantly familiar.

‘İkmen?’ She looked up into a pair of dark, intelligent eyes and attempted a smile.

‘If you don’t mind my saying so,’ he said as he hunkered down to her level, ‘your face is as white as the snow.’

This was not an issue Zelfa wanted to address just then.

‘What are you doing here, İkmen?’ Behind him she could see a large number of uniformed officers spreading out around the perimeter of the ancient building.